


We Are Not Unspectacular Things

by thecloserkin (tabacoychanel)



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brother/Sister Incest, F/M, Mostly Canon Compliant, but for some reason my brain decided to rehash canon only make the sex text instead of subtext, hi i'm sorry about the underage, i would've aged them up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:55:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24193171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabacoychanel/pseuds/thecloserkin
Summary: He thought about her more than he thought about video games, or tacos, or porn. He sure as shit didn’t have any brain cells left over for schoolwork, and it showed.
Relationships: Andy Strucker/Lauren Strucker
Comments: 18
Kudos: 58





	1. Chapter 1

When Andy was four and Lauren was six, she let him sleep with her favorite stuffed elephant and she never asked for it back.

:::

The summer when Andy was five and Lauren was seven, Dad took them to the swimming pool at the YMCA to teach them to swim. They didn’t have a pool in their backyard, though most of the neighbors did. Most of the neighbors had dads who spent more time on yard work and less time at the office.

Dad had wanted to take them to a lake up in the mountains where he had learned to swim as a boy, and that had sounded grand to Andy—they might have found frogs with three heads! Or rocks from outer space! But Mom had not liked the idea. There were no lifeguards posted around lakes.

As it turned out, the lifeguards at the local Y were bored teenagers who mostly chatted with other bored teenagers. Lauren took to the water like she had been born a dolphin. Andy didn’t.

Mom claimed that all babies were born swimmers. Andy pictured a pair of tiny tadpoles doing backflips in Mom’s belly, until one day Lauren had to go (she would have wiggled her tail to say see you soon). Andy was all right as long as the floaties were fastened to his arms. Take them off, and he began to thrash and scream. Mom couldn’t decide to be mad at Andy for causing a scene, or mad at Dad for being a bad teacher. Dad insisted it didn’t count as real swimming if Andy needed floaties to stay afloat. Mom said Dad must be doing it wrong. Dad told her to back off, and stop micromanaging, and plenty of other things Andy didn’t understand (“you think it’s no big deal to ask for time off in the middle of a big case?”). Mom had apparently made up her mind to be mad at Dad for the moment, which meant Andy was only waiting his turn to come under fire.

He was kicking his legs at the edge of the shallow end when Lauren popped out of the water to ask him what was taking him so long.

“Don’t have my floaties on. Can’t swim without ‘em.”

“Can too. I’ll show you.”

“Dad’s showing me.”

She threw a wave that splashed him full in the face. “Are you gonna get in, or am I gonna pull you in?”

“I’ll drown,” said Andy around a throatful of water.

“Nah. I got you.”

By the time Mom and Dad had finished doling out blame for every poor parenting decision since the kids’ inception, Lauren and Andy were splashing and laughing in the deep end. They accounted that a very successful family outing.

:::

When Andy was five and Lauren was seven, he tagged along to her ballet classes. Mom spent a long time pinning Lauren’s hair up. Lauren had a lot of hair.

Andy was sleepy. He hadn’t gotten a nap earlier. Mom put her arm around him and let him snuggle into her side, and together they watched Lauren bounce around in front of all those mirrors until Andy’s eyelids grew heavy.

:::

When Andy was eight and Lauren was ten, he got a set of X-Men action figures for his birthday.

He said, “Do you want to be Pyro or do you want to be Phoenix?”

“You pick.”

“Which one do _you_ want to be?”

“I don’t want to be a mutie,” she told him, like he was _five_ and needed it spelled out. She picked up the Phoenix figurine anyway.

Andy didn’t want to be a mutie either, but he wondered sometimes what it would be like to be special. Not special-special, the way kids who needed extra help at school were special. Andy would rather have been normal. But if normal was right out for him then he might at least have been the cool kind of special instead of the awkward, sad, lonely kind.

Lauren, of course, was as normal as normal got.

When Andy was ten and Lauren was twelve, mutant terrorists blew up the White House and Andy shoved his X-men action figures to the back of his closet.

:::

When Andy was twelve and Lauren was fourteen, there were bullies. Bullies were part of the scenery, like trees or fire hydrants. They stole his lunch and stuffed slime in his locker and chanted embarrassing insults that rhymed with his name, but he got on with his day. Andy knew the first rule of bullies was you couldn’t let them scent blood or it was all over for you. Andy wished he was better at following rules.

Lauren found him kneeling over his broken phone. She surveyed the damage. “Damn.”

“What?”

“You’ve only had that phone two weeks.” It had been a week and a half, actually. She picked it up gingerly. The screen was cracked but not so badly she couldn’t see the page he’d been viewing. “They started a private Facebook group?”

“There’s an Instagram account too.”

“What the _fuck_.”

“When Mom and Dad find out I smashed my new phone up…”

“Mom and Dad won’t care about your phone once they find out these clowns are spreading this garbage about you. Absolute filth.” Lauren’s face was alight with righteous fury.

“Don’t you dare tell them.”

“Why not?”

“The first thing Mom and Dad would do is report it to the guidance counselor, who would call the other kids’ parents. That would make it a million times worse.”

“Ugh, you’re right. How long has this been going on?”

Andy shrugged. “It’s not the bullies. I’m used to them. But that Instagram has three hundred followers. I don’t even think the most popular kid in my grade has three hundred followers.”

“I get it.”

“No. No you don’t.” When she flinched back he added, “I mean you’ve never been cruel on purpose.”

She nodded. “Well, what are we supposed to tell Mom and Dad about your phone?”

He had had to pester them for over a year before they let him have his own phone. He didn’t, strictly speaking, need a phone—not the way Lauren did, with her dozens of activities. Mom had flat-out told him she trusted Lauren not to _abuse the privilege._ Andy, not so much.

Lauren said with an air of decision, “I’ll tell them it was me. I’ll tell them we were messing around and I made you drop it.”

“You’ll … what?”

“If it was my fault they can’t blame you.”

“They always blame me.”

She patted his cheek, the way she used to when they were little. “Not this time.”

He wondered if she ever got tired of being so good all the damn time. He wondered if she was doing this because she was just naturally a good sister, or because … what was the alternative? Lord, let her not pity him. Let there be one person in the universe who was not disappointed in Andy.

:::

When Andy was thirteen and Lauren was fifteen, they stayed at Uncle Danny’s for a week while Mom and Dad went on a cruise. Their cousin Scott was a year older than Andy but acted like he was infinitely more worldly, and it annoyed the shit out of Andy. Andy was morally certain that Scott had never been within touching distance of a boob. He found himself wishing Lauren would join them in front of the Xbox more often, because her presence was the only thing that shut Scott up. Lauren didn’t do video games, of course. She flopped on Scott’s bed and read girly magazines, and sometimes she did her nails at the same time, which made the room smell like the ozone layer was burning up.

Scott would wrinkle his nose after she was gone. “Dude, does your sister do her nails in _your_ room?”

“Occasionally.” It had never occurred to Andy not to let her.

Scott was struck by the notion of Lauren voluntarily spending time with Andy. “Doesn’t she go on dates? A girl like that.”

Andy almost snapped. Did Scott ever think about anything besides boobs? “What do you mean?”

“If she wasn’t my cousin I would tap that so fast.”

“You’re unbelievable,” groaned Andy. “Can we talk about something else for five seconds?”

“Come on man. You see it too. Just because you’re her brother doesn’t mean you’re blind.”

The truth was, Andy could not remember a time when he did not think Lauren beautiful. She was beautiful the way sunsets were beautiful—comment was unnecessary because what kind of moron was unmoved by a sunset? But Andy was beginning to appreciate the difference between _beautiful_ and _attractive_ , since Scott defined a _hot girl_ as one you exchanged ten words with before putting a hand up her shirt.

“She's my sister _and your cousin_."

“Imagine if she wasn’t! Imagine if she was a stranger.”

“Let me get this straight. You hook up with a girl because you _don’t_ know her? Is the idea to like, get to know her as you go?”

“It’s not always about the girl. It’s about kicking back with your friends and checking out girls.”

Andy didn’t have the heart to tell Scott he had no friends. He said, “That why you’re always checking out the NPCs in-game?”

“You’re just jealous not even NPCs would give you the time of day,” Scott retorted, and tossed a pillow at his head. Scott wasn’t all bad—at least he laughed _with_ Andy and not _at_ Andy.

:::

When Andy was fourteen and Lauren was sixteen, something changed in Lauren. No one else appeared to notice. No one other than Andy had been paying attention.

If her grades had slipped, Mom and Dad would definitely have noticed. If she had stopped curling her hair and picking out cute outfits, her friends would have noticed. There was nothing outwardly wrong with her. But going through the motions took her just that much extra effort. It was a wonder Mom and Dad didn’t see it too. Maybe Mom and Dad saw what they wanted to see, which was was one well-adjusted child out of two, which was not such a terrible batting average.

Andy’s mission in life became to make Lauren react to something. Anything. He learned to beatbox so he could ambush her while she was doing dishes. He paid her back the twenty dollars he owed her…entirely in pennies. He changed her phone lockscreen to a picture of himself as a cross-eyed baby. The day of her big ballet recital he hid under her bed in a panda bodysuit and sprang out as soon her alarm went off, so she was too busy fuming at him to suffer stage fright. That last one got him grounded for a week, but it was worth it. If playing the annoying younger sibling was the only way to banish the distant look from her eyes, then Andy was willing to take the hit.

He had a vague idea of doing a few skateboarding tricks on the afternoon Mom and Dad rounded them both up for a family picnic. He was about as likely to perform a successful kickflip as to fall on his face, but so long as Lauren was watching raptly he’d chalk it up as a win. Once they got to the park, he had a better idea.

She said, “I don’t skateboard,” but he had caught her wistful glances.

“I’ll _fall_ ,” she cried, but he said, “Trust me. I’ll catch you.”

He remembered her teaching him to swim all those years ago. This was just the same. Hadn’t she promised to have his back? He could do this. He could give her this gift.

He helped her up. When she wobbled a bit he reached for her hand to steady her, and the instant they touched Andy was positive the sun had gone supernova. It was too much, too heightened. He could see _through_ matter, through the entrails and the bones, down to the atoms. He felt her fear and her excitement; he had been so attuned to Lauren’s moods for so long he did not at first realize he was _experiencing_ her feelings, not just deducing their existence. Everything was one thing and that one thing was laurenandandy.

With this new godlike clarity Andy saw he was an idiot. Why had it been so important to him that Lauren was okay? Why had he wanted desperately to make Lauren laugh, why had he wanted…Lauren. _Oh_. He wanted Lauren, fullstop. He wanted her in every way it was possible to want someone. Belatedly it dawned on him that whatever this psychic link was, it probably went both ways, and he dropped her hand in a cold panic.

Forget skateboarding, Andy was going to have difficulty walking upright.

That night was the first time he brought himself off thinking of Lauren (instead of a faceless blonde chick who merely bore a suspicious resemblance to Lauren). _What the hell happened in the park?_ was a question that would have to remain subordinate to _How do I keep my sister from suspecting I want to bone her?_ He was horny all the time now (not just 90% of the time). He had to be careful not to touch her, because what if it happened again? What if her skin was an electric fence and he got the same jolt of desire every time he brushed it? He had _liked_ that jolt. He’d liked it more than anything. Maybe it was a low-level charge designed to kill him with prolonged contact (“Keep Away: Incest”). And maybe he didn’t care—he was already a freak—but Lauren did.

It wasn’t as dramatic as tripping a switch. There was a Lauren knob in his head and someone had come along and dialed it up to eleven, that was all. Now he thought about her more than he thought about video games, or tacos, or porn. He sure as shit didn’t have any brain cells left over for schoolwork, and it showed. He couldn’t worry about that now. What concerned him at the moment was the very real possibility that the only person in the world who loved him without reservation would discover the true nature of his feelings and never speak to him again.

:::

“Andy, I need you to come with me to the pet store.”

“Hmm?”

“My Oscars are getting too big for their tank. The store’s put their floor models on 70% clearance and their fish tanks are three times as big as mine.”

“Yeah, yeah, but do you have to … loom?”

“Andy, you are lying on the couch.”

From this angle he could see the outline of bra. She was wearing the green one today. No padding; she didn’t need it. Nevermind the perfect globes of her breasts—if he got to circle her waist with his own two hands, just once, he would die a happy man.

“Are you coming or should I ask Jack?” she demanded impatiently, and Andy sat bolt upright.

“No no no. I’ll come. Gimme a sec.”

Only when they were in the car did it occur to Andy to wonder why she hadn’t asked Jack to help her in the first place. Jack, her boyfriend.

“It’s not his kind of thing,” she explained without taking her eyes off the road.

“What’s his kind of thing?” Andy speculated, before launching into a series of exaggerated smacking noises. He didn’t quit until Lauren had stopped scowling and cracked a real smile. At least he still had the power to amuse her. That was a comfort.

“Why are you even dating him if he’s so useless?”

“He’s into me.”

“Are you into _him_?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Boys ask girls out. Girls can say yes or no, but they can’t choose who to say it to.”

“Then why didn’t you say no?”

“I wasn’t sure it _was_ a no. And I was raised to say yes. Always to say yes. It was just easier.”

“Yo, that’s fucked up.”

“It’s the way it is.”

“Lauren, is it that hard to say no? To just decide you don’t want something?”

“Maybe if I had some idea what I _did_ want.”

Andy wanted to put his arms around her so bad he had to dig his nails into his thighs to quell the impulse. “Tell me one thing that you want.”

“I wish my boobs were smaller.”

“Jesus fucking Christ. You’re not serious.”

“I don’t want to be weird…“

“No, no, you’re not…they’re not…” he sputtered to a halt. “But _why_?” he asked plaintively.

“I don’t really have a future in ballet. I don’t have the figure for it. If I was built like Mom it would be a different story. But I have this stupid hourglass figure, which is great for boys asking me out. Not so great for my body doing anything actually useful.”

“You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my entire life” burst out of him before he had a chance to calibrate the earnestness of this declaration to acceptable levels of irony.

She rolled her eyes at him. “I’m not a girl, I’m your sister.”

:::

When Andy was fifteen and Lauren was seventeen, the strength of his repressed longing for her brought the roof of the gym down on a school dance. Technically he supposed it was his superpowers that did it, but it sure felt like his superpowers were fueled by his desire to fuck his sister. Some days he thought his powers had been _activated_ by his desire.

He was so tired of running from bullies. He was scared and angry and horny _all the time_ , and the thing that scared him most was Lauren finding out. (Finding out what? That he was a mutant? That he was a pervert? That he was a loser, she already knew full well.) It would ruin everything. She would think him a monster. It was a blessed relief to channel his pent-up feelings into tearing a building apart instead of excoriating himself. He hadn’t planned on getting buried by rubble but it wasn’t as if he cared either.

Until Lauren had come back for him.

He should not have been surprised. She’d been bailing him out for as long as he’d been alive. “Why didn’t you tell me about your powers?” he hissed at her in the car. “How long have you known?”

“How long have _you_ known?” she shot back.

“I didn’t say anything because Mom and Dad wouldn’t have believed me. They’d have thought I was acting out for attention.”

“Mom and Dad would have believed me,” she said in a small voice.

He didn’t ask her why she’d kept silent. He didn’t begrudge her the months of peace and normalcy that she had bought with her silence. “I’m glad,” he said, “that we’re in this together. I wouldn’t want to do it alone.”

“Me too,” she sighed. “Just, try not to go around disintegrating buildings for no reason, okay?”

“I had a reason. I was mad. And it felt good. I’ve never been _good_ at anything before, Lauren.”

“That’s not true.” There was a stubborn set to her jaw. “Hey, let me see that cut—is it bleeding again? I’m going to pull over so I can put a band-aid—“

“It’s _fine_.” He batted away her hand. “Just drive, Lauren. The sooner we get home the sooner we can give Mom a heart attack.”

:::

On the whole, Mom took it better than Dad. “It” encompassed being uprooted from everything they knew with only the clothes on their backs, so “better” was perhaps an overbroad generalization. But Dad believed deeply in the rule of law. Mom believed deeply in keeping her own family safe. (Also in being a control freak about storage and organization, a trait that Lauren had inherited from her.)

The worst part of being a refugee was not the crappy canteen food, or sharing a laundry machine with forty other people, or even Mom’s deranged notions of a “reasonable” homeschooling curriculum. It was the lack of privacy. It was not being able to shut the world out by shutting your door and blasting music and screaming yourself hoarse. It was, frankly, the difficulty of finding a place to masturbate.

Some people got themselves off at night in their bunks. Hell, some people got each _other_ off. You could hear them; it was impossible not to. Mom and Dad were utterly aghast—you could see them weighing the advantages of stuffing cotton in Andy and Lauren’s ears, as if Andy had not been watching porn since he was twelve years old.

Andy took care of business in the shower every morning. He had tried doing it in the woods, but there was a shortage of nice smooth rocks to sit on. Once or twice he was almost desperate enough to do it at night—like an _animal_ —with Lauren right there in the next bed, but the disadvantage of that was…she was in the next bed. He’d never be able to look her in the eye again.

The disused supply closet was the answer to his prayers. The door didn’t lock from the inside, but it sure beat not having a door. Finally, Andy could take his time. He was covered in a sheen of sweat from training; somehow, the practice of his powers always kindled in him a powerful need for release. He needed this badly. He had just got a good rhythm going when the door snicked open and he was awash in light.

“Andy?” said Lauren.

He was paralyzed by indecision: Should he lunge for his pants or the door? What if someone else happened by? “Close the goddamn door,” he snarled.

He had meant for her to be standing on the other side of it, but she took a step and it clicked shut behind her. A single dying lightbulb flickered above them. Was it buzzing, or was that just in his head? Lauren wore an oversize sweater over her usual leggings. He could see every muscle in her calves. He could sync his breathing to the rise and fall of her glorious, pillowy breasts.

“You didn’t finish. I…interrupted you.”

Andy was going to have a stroke on the spot. “This isn’t funny. If you followed me up here just to make fun of—“

“I didn’t follow you.”

“Bullshit.“

“I can _sense_ you. When you get like this, when you get super duper turned on, the feeling is so intense I can’t think about anything else. I could feel you getting closer and closer and I just, I had to see.”

Well, she had certainly seen everything of his there was to see. And she hadn’t laughed, and she hadn’t left. She was still here. “Lauren,” he began, and ohmygod this was a terrible idea, “what are you thinking about right now?”

She had to tear her gaze away from his dick to meet his eyes, and when her tongue darted between her half-parted lips that was answer enough.

“Come here,” said Andy. She remained frozen like a skittish colt. “It’s okay, it’s just me. I just want to make you feel good.”

“There’s a word for this.”

“Yeah. _Mutie_. Can you think of a worse word?”

“Is this a good idea?”

“I only do dumb ideas.”

The instant he settled his hands on her hips he could have sworn the room grew brighter; the buzzing intensified. The clean, fresh scent of her hair was making his stomach do somersaults. He cupped her asscheek in one hand, slid the other palm over her mound. She swallowed a strangled noise.

“Hey, hey,” he said sternly. “None of that. I want to hear you.”

“This is embarrassing.”

“You’re the one who watches me masturbate on your psychic webcam! What do you call that.”

“That was hot.”

“So are you,” and he bent down to suck her stiff nipple into his mouth. Damn, it was like God had molded Lauren’s tits specifically for Andy to hold.

He wouldn’t let her touch his cock, though it was fit to burst. Lauren had come to him in her hour of need, and he wasn’t going to let her down. He got her down to her underwear, and for one stunned moment marveled at the dampness he found there.

“Lauren. Your pussy is _gushing_.”

“Your fault.”

“My fault? This is for me?” How was this even happening? Was it a wet dream? Was he going to wake up in a sticky tangle of underwear and bedsheets?

“Mm-hmm.” She licked a drop of sweat from his collarbone. “I like it when you say that word.”

“Pussy,” he murmured worshipfully. “My sister’s sweet, sweet pussy.” With every repetition a wave of arousal pooled in his belly— _Lauren_ ’s arousal, he was feeling Lauren’s arousal. It was like having double vision.

He peeled her panties off, skimmed his palms up the backs of her thighs. He traced one knuckle along the seam of her and was rewarded by a violent juddering. “Hurry _up_ ,” she whined.

Andy brought his knuckle to his mouth. It didn’t taste nice, exactly, but it tasted like Lauren and that sent a spike of pleasure straight to the core of him. Lauren’s eyes were huge as saucers. He said, “Tell me what you want.”

“You know what I want, jackass, we’re like the same person right now.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Please, Andy.”

He dipped two fingers inside her entrance and she was leaking all over them, canting her hips into the heel of his hand, and he could feel her release approaching like an avalanche. He understood now what she had meant by sensing how close he was. “Do you get this wet for anyone else?” he demanded, because if she did it was a wonder she ever wore pants in public.

“Obviously not,” she gritted out.

“What about Wes? Do you let him do this to you?”

“Never.”

Andy thought of five other things he would _like_ to do to her, all of them with her ass up in the air. Lauren groaned then, because of course she could pluck every filthy fantasy directly out of his brain. “ _Andy_ ,” she whimpered, “I’m so close.”

“That’s it. Be a good girl and come for me, c’mon, just like that, yes.”

It was like coaxing open an oyster and finding a pearl at the center of it. It was like nothing he’d ever experienced; every last one of his nerve endings felt raw and exposed, and his blood was pounding so hard in his ears he was probably going to need a transfusion soon. The only sound in the world was the sound of her chanting his name, “Andy, Andy, Andy, Andy.”

Then the spell was broken and his sister was naked in his arms and he hadn’t even got to kiss her properly. The impulse to kiss her far outweighed the urgency of his painful erection. Her soft, swollen lips were right there. Before he could close those few inches, she turned a giddy smile on him. “Whoah. It’s a lot better when you’re touching me. I mean, compared to the long-distance version.”

He blinked. “I think,” he said slowly, since he had apparently forgotten how to form words, “I should never touch you. Ever.” She frowned. “Because I wouldn’t be able to stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop touching you.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip. “Next time, we should—“

“There isn’t gonna be a next time.”

“Your dick is _literally_ about to explode, Andy.”

“I can take care of it,” he growled, but she fell to her knees and said, “No, let me.”

How was he supposed to deny her anything? How was he supposed to look at the perfect rosebud of her mouth and be the master of himself? “Lauren, you should leave. You got what you came for, now you can go back to sucking Wes’s face.”

“I’d rather suck your dick.”

God in heaven. “Am I a joke to you? Am I that pathetic?”

“You think I’m pretending to be … you think this doesn't mean anything? Seriously?”

“I think you have no clue what you want, and that’s why you keep dating a string of guys you have zero interest in. I get it, okay? I’m the safe option. I’m the release valve.”

Lauren offered her hand to him, palm up. “Take it. Take my hand and tell me there’s anything _safe_ about what we’re doing. Every time we touch it’s like Disneyworld on the Fourth of July. If we ever…you know… _did_ it, I bet we’d set off armageddon.”

He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

“What is it?” asked Lauren.

“Your brain.”

“Is my brain really the part of my anatomy you’re interested in right now?”

He was made of flesh and blood, after all, and she was begging for it. He knew she would regret it later—knew he would hate himself for letting her—but he was not strong enough, nor nearly noble enough, to resist. (Because all that was bright or noble about him resided in Lauren.)

:::

Predictably, sex had the effect of turbocharging their powers. Lorna was thrilled with their progress.

:::

Lauren avoided him for two days. On the third day he cornered her in the greenhouse and handed her a bulb of … something. Hell, Andy didn’t know anything about plants. “Here. Sonya said you’d know what to do with it.”

She was careful not to brush his fingers as she took the jar from him.

“You know, if I knew you’d stop talking to me I’d never have touched you. You're avoiding me.”

“Only because every time I’m near you I want to do it again."

“Oh. It’s … not because you regret it?”

“Do I regret it,” she huffed derisively, and took another soil sample. “I haven’t been able to think about anything else for three days. I’ve never felt like that. Do you think it feels that way for other people? Do you think this is normal?”

None of this was normal. Andy had never been normal. But it was different for Lauren, for whom “normal” was a possibility lately foreclosed rather than a mythical country. He chose his words carefully. “It doesn’t have to happen again if you don’t want it to. I don’t want you having second thoughts.”

She shook her head slowly. "No second thoughts. Would it matter if I did? If having powers gives us these uncontrollable urges, and you teenage boys are basically walking bundles of hormones..."

“Yeah but it’s _you_ , Lauren. I can’t risk losing you, not even for orgasms.”

The corner of her mouth quirked up. “What if you could have me _and_ orgasms?”

She didn't break it off with Wes (Wes had to do that himself). She did not repudiate sin and taboo and morality and Mom and Dad. She was not even wholly glad to be a mutant (Andy could feel her ambivalence). She did continue being his sister, and it wasn’t enough for Andy but he would take half a loaf of bread over none.

:::

They did it again in the supply closet. They did it separately in their own beds, late at night, when they were absolutely certain Mom and Dad were dead asleep (“Now I know what phone sex without phones feels like,” grumbled Andy.) Andy liked it best when they did it outside under the open sky, because quickies in the semi-dark were hot but seeing Lauren’s naked body spread out before him, dappled in sunlight? Priceless.

“Are you turning into some kind of poet,” she sniffed when he told her.

“Nope.” He paused mock-thoughtfully. “I wrote a few bars of a rap verse about your left ankle though, do you want to hear—“

She did not.

:::

After they had joined the Mutant Underground Andy had asked his father point-blank, “Do you hate us?” and for once would not be fobbed off by the usual _You’re my son_. “I want to know if it was a hard choice, giving us up or going on the run. We ruined your life, Dad.”

“No,” his father admitted, “it was not an easy choice. But I don’t regret it, and I have a new life now.”

“How do you know what the right choice is? How do you know if you’re doing the right thing?”

Dad had spent twenty years in law enforcement, and that may have been one reason he and Andy did not get along. Andy was too chaotic a force; Dad’s first instinct was to discipline disorder wherever he found it. But Dad was the closest thing to a moral authority Andy had. “There’s no _one_ right thing. You just make a bunch of decisions day after day and the sum of that is who you are.”

“Mmmmm.”

“How about you, Andy? How do you decide what the right thing is?”

“To be honest I just follow Lauren’s lead.”

:::

And so their combined powers had a name, Fenris. For Mom and Dad it was a hard pill to swallow—but Mom and Dad were stuck in parenting-mode long after they ought to have switched over to survival-mode. Suddenly they were fretting about their kids holding _hands_? If they only knew what else Andy and Lauren got up to.

Fenris, then, represented a precedent. It meant all of this had happened before, that Andy and Lauren were not the first people to grapple with a shared mutant power that was amplified by--that practically compelled--sexual intimacy. Andy spent two feverish days digging up every scrap of information about the von Struckers he could lay hands on. At the end of it his eyes were bloodshot and Lauren was extremely cross with him. “What did you find out?”

“Our great-grandparents were the real MVPs.”

“Our great-grandfather and his sister, you mean.”

He shot her an _Are you kidding me_ look. “Our great-grandparents.”

“Oh? That was in the historical record, was it?”

“Course not. I just know in my bones that if we keep using our powers together I am going to fuck you sooner or later.” And there it was out in the open. They had not crossed that line, not yet. It would be the point of no return.

Lauren did not contradict him. She said, “If they ever found out, it would kill Mom and Dad.”

“More like Mom and Dad would kill _us_.”

“We’re way more likely to kill them, don’t you think? Given that we have powers and they don’t.”

Andy dismissed the having-of-powers with an airy wave. “When Dad gave me the Talk, he promised he would personally hunt me down and castrate me if I ever had sex without a condom.”

“Oh my god are we really comparing notes on the _Talk_?”

He grinned lazily. “Just tell me who you would rather ask for a condom, Mom or Dad.”

“Honestly I would rather die.”

:::

“Who would you ask for a condom, Clarice or Lorna?”

“Jesus! Andy, you scared the shit out of me.”

“Answer the question.”

“Well, Clarice, I guess. Lorna would just tell you to man up and pull out.”

:::

“Who would you ask for a condom, Marcos or John?”

“I mean, Marcos would buy every product on the shelf just to be safe, and you’d end up with all the funky flavors nobody likes…”

:::

“Who would you ask for a condom, Sage or Fade?”

“Oh, definitely not Sage, Sage would want to take dick measurements to make sure it fits.”

:::

Unfortunately none of these people were on hand to supply Andy and Lauren with condoms at the crucial juncture.

Looking back, he cursed his own naivety for assuming this was about the two of them—about Lauren and Andy and the ways they did or didn’t love each other. He’d read the history books, hadn’t he? He should not have forgotten that the shadow of Fenris loomed over everything. It always came back to Fenris. It was on account of Fenris that this thing between him and Lauren existed at all. And it was Fenris that would ultimately grind all his romantic illusions into dust.

They got themselves captured by Sentinel Services. They were separated from Sonya and Clarice; collared, searched, stripped, herded into cells like rats. Andy felt very rat-like. He kept readjusting his collar even though it didn’t chafe. He chose to cling to anger over despair and he prayed that goons with guns would not march in to separate him and Lauren.

(It was like one of those fairy tales where you got precisely what you wished for and the opposite of what you wanted.)

They were not separated. They were given showers and a change of clothes and brought to another sterile coffin of a room, bristling with sensors and cameras and bare of furniture save a single bed bolted to the floor. That was when Andy began to get an inkling of their captors’ design. If this was to be their new cell why was there only one bed? Why were there so many sensors, and a TV screen mounted in the wall? Why would they have removed the collars?

A man with a disfiguring scar appeared on the screen, flanked by two carbon copies of Esme whom he introduced as the Frost sisters. There was something eerie and inhuman about the man, Dr. Campbell. (Yes, inhuman—Andy and Lauren may have been mutants but this man had ichor and not blood in his veins.)

“I’ll need the two of you to combine your powers,” said Dr. Campbell. “Since your powers are augmented by intercourse, let’s get right to it, shall we?” From his demeanor you might have thought he was proposing to take their temperature or their blood pressure.

“This is _sick_ ,” spat Lauren. She was trembling. Andy laid a hand on the small of her back. “You’re delusional if you think we would …. no. Go find some other guinea pigs.”

The Frost sisters cocked their heads in unison and said, “Do the children require encouragement?” Andy did not think he imagined the glee in their voices.

Dr. Campbell shook his head. “I want a baseline reading without any psychic interference. And,” he added, “I suspect it’s not the act itself they’re averse to, it’s the audience. Well, we all make sacrifices for science.”

“You mean they’ve done this before?” The Frosts glanced disbelievingly between Dr. Campbell and the Struckers.

“Our data suggest not. If they had, their powers would be orders of magnitude greater.”

“Well isn’t this just perfect! They get to do what they’ve wanted to do all along. That’s very _fraternal_ of you, Andy, to comfort her, but you don’t have to pretend now. We know what you are.”

Andy drew his palm away from Lauren’s skin. It felt like he had been scalded. “Go fuck yourselves.”

“No, _you’re_ the ones —“ giggled the Frosts, but Dr. Campbell only looked grave. “I thought we could do this the easy way.” The screen blinked out.

Lauren whispered urgently, “How does he know about us? What the fuck is this _data_?”

“Nothing good.”

“There must be some other way. We can’t give him what he wants.”

Andy was very much afraid the doctor had arranged it so there _was_ no other way. _But what if it’s what I want too? If I participate in this torture cinema and I enjoy it, does that make me the monster?_ “It's gonna be okay. We'll be okay.”

She shuddered. “Did you see the way he was looking at us?”

Andy couldn’t even hug her. He longed to, but would not willingly feed those sensors any more data than they were already collecting.

When Dr. Campbell came back he had Clarice and Sonya in tow. He explained, “Whatever happens to them is entirely up to you, Lauren and Andy. This doesn’t have to be difficult—just let nature take its course.”

Nature. Natural. Unnatural. What did those words even mean, when Fenris slept in their blood? It was their natures that had landed them in this cage as experimental subjects. It was their natures that got Sonya shot in the head. Sonya had the audacity to protest their treatment—otherwise it would have been Clarice’s blood pooling on the floor. Further defiance seemed futile.

Lauren fell to her knees in shock. Her eyes were empty and tears streamed down her cheeks. “Lauren,” he said. “Lauren, Lauren, what do we do? Tell me what we do. Lauren, please come back to me.” No reaction. “Lauren, they’ve still got Clarice. But if you say no … I’ll do whatever you say.” He waited. At length she gave him a short, sharp nod to acknowledge her acceptance of the inevitable.

He took a deep breath and turned to the screen, fixed his gaze on Dr. Campbell. “I’m going to need a condom.”

“You sure, chief?” smirked the Frosts. “You’ll like it better if you don’t.”

“I am not,” enunciated Andy, “going to _like_ any of this.”

“But you will,” frowned Dr. Campbell. “You must. It won’t work otherwise. The Fenris connection is only reinforced if you both climax. You _can_ ensure your sister peaks, can’t you?”

Andy understood now why people committed premeditated murder. He would rather Dr. Campbell have just shoved an arrow up his ass. Arrows could be extracted, wounds could be sewn up, but if he let this poison into his system Andy would never be clean again. Lauren was the only truth he knew; if he lost her he would lose his mind.

He knelt beside her crumpled form. She was still sobbing. “I’m gonna pick you up, okay?”

He set her on the edge of the bed and tucked her forehead into the crook of his neck. It was familiar and alien at once. He buried his nose in Lauren’s hair but her shampoo smelled wrong and these walls were so white they glowed. “Look at me,” tilting her chin up, “forget about the rest, just look at me. It’s me, Lauren. It’s you and me.”

“They have cameras. They’re recording this.”

Holy mother of god. He twisted around to face Dr. Campbell. “Is it really necessary for Clarice to be here? You’ve made your point, you have our attention.”

The doctor made a shooing motion as if to say _get on with it_. “She stays to ensure I retain your attention.” Andy did not have the fortitude to look for Clarice’s reaction to the scene.

He had pictured their first time a thousand different ways in his mind. In none of them had Lauren been crying. How was it possible that Fenris was the source of his and Lauren’s connection—of the only untarnished thing in his life—and Fenris was simultaneously causing him to rip his beating heart out of his own ribcage? He wished he was a lab rat wearing a shock collar. He wished he could muster the purity of contempt to loathe Dr. Campbell and the Frosts for their depravity, but too much of his contempt was reserved for himself. He _still_ wanted Lauren, even here, even now. The wanting simply never went away. “We don’t have to go through with this. You say the word and we stop.”

“And let them kill Clarice? No. We have to do this—but Andy, I’m so scared. Can you even get it up in front of this circus?”

“I can always get it up for you.” He pressed his lips into the hollow of her throat and felt the laugh that bubbled up from there. He wondered if he would ever be able to make her laugh again. Maybe that’s how he ought to think about this, as a challenge. Dr. Campbell doubted Andy’s ability to make Lauren come? Andy Strucker was the world’s foremost expert on Lauren Strucker. Game _on_.

“Look at me,” he murmured into her hair, her shoulder blade, the delicate shell of her ear. “Ignore them. Look at me, look at me, look at me” and what he was really saying was _mine_. _You’re mine mine mine, always were always will be, this is the proof_. It was an incantation. If he repeated it enough he could speak it into existence.

She was frightened, yes, but she was excited too. He could feel it thrumming under her skin, and it needed only a tiny push to tip her into arousal. She had been anticipating this consummation for as long as he had. Andy knew exactly what she needed.

He knew every dimple on her abdomen, every vertebrae in the column of her spine, every ticklish spot and every scar and scabbed-over mosquito bite. When she was turned on he knew every thought in her head. The entire cosmos tapered to the nub of her clitoris, and Andy set to work licking his way into perdition, his sister’s long legs wrapped around his neck and her moans—god, if he could bottle her moans and replay them later he’d never watch another porno. He ran the tip of his tongue along her glistening folds, stabbed at her clit, darted his tongue back inside her. (Inside, yes, he was going to be inside her very soon now. His dick lurched in his pants.) His thumbs rubbed along her outer lips, or caressed the backs of her knees. He sensed the ache of emptiness growing in her belly. “Andy, if you don’t fill me up soon I’m gonna die.”

“Shhhh, I need to bring you right to the edge, ‘cause once I’m inside you I won’t last long.”

“Inside. Me,” she gasped between moans, and wow nothing got him hard as fast as eating Lauren out did. She was almost ready for him. He was almost going to fuck her.

Belatedly he remembered the condom. The packaging defeated him until Lauren snatched it, tore it open with her teeth, matter-of-factly instructed him to hold the base of his cock while she rolled it over his throbbing length. (“You’ve done this before.” "You know I haven’t. You’re just a dumbass who can’t even open a cereal box.”)

Once he sheathed himself to the hilt in her, he promptly forgot how to breathe. He decided he could forgo breathing for now. “ _Fuck_ , Lauren.” If this was sex he wondered how people did not die of it. She was so tight, so wet. She was utterly wrecked and wholly his. He could feel her discomfort but also the pulse of her desire beating steadily alongside his own. One stroke, two strokes, three strokes, almost there.

( _If we ever…you know…did it, I bet we’d set off armageddon_.)

Of course he didn’t last long. How was anyone supposed to last more than ten seconds within the walls of Lauren’s hot, wet, perfect pussy? Andy was lucky: every time he did this he got to experience _two_ orgasms. He got to feel her come apart for him, and it was beautiful. Like watching a falling star, it was that exquisite. He had timed it just right. Lauren came first—Lauren had always done everything first—and her spasming walls milked him for everything he was worth. This was the end of days, this was the rapture, this was his kingdom come.

They were still joined when by mutual assent they laced their fingers together. A cold wind rose at their backs as every solid object and the room itself grew transparent, then iridescent, then he stopped noticing because he had transcended matter and time. This was Fenris—this was who they were, who they were mean to be. The rush of power was beyond anything. It was just like orgasm: he didn’t want to stop, wasn’t sure he _could_ stop, and damn the consequences.

They didn’t stop until the walls had crumpled to dust around them to reveal Dr. Campbell, the Frosts, and Clarice (suspended between two beefy security guards) all wearing identical expressions of open-mouthed awe and abject terror. Sonya’s corpse sprawled at their feet.

“I am ….satisfied with your performance for today,” said Dr. Campbell. “Collar them.”

:::

Andy wasn’t even sure he wanted to be rescued. What was there to go back to? The humans feared and hated them for being mutants. The mutants feared and hated them for Fenris (he had not missed Clarice’s stricken expression, back in the lab). Mom and Dad loved them, but Mom and Dad did not know he had been balls deep inside of Lauren.

Everyone would know soon enough. There had been half a dozen witnesses and there was a sex tape. A _sex tape_! He remembered when one of Lauren’s classmates had her nudes leaked by a spiteful ex, and the scandal had spread like wildfire. Mom and Dad had seized the teachable moment to remind Andy and Lauren of the dangers of sexting. _And now look at us. There is no going back to normal after this._

Shackled shoulder to shoulder in the prison transport, he dreaded that Clarice would edge away from him. She had seen what he and Lauren could do, what they were. But there was no judgment in Clarice, only gratitude and empathy. The first he might have expected—they had saved her life (they had not saved Sonya’s). But empathy? What had Andy ever done to deserve that?

“I was a foster kid,” Clarice said patiently, “I know what it’s like to feel responsible for my abusers’ actions. I don’t claim to understand what you guys are going through, but what happened in that lab was seven different kinds of fucked up. I’m sorry for Sonya. I’m sorry for you both.”

“People will talk. People will hear about it.” Lauren’s tone was resigned.

“Not from me,” said Clarice.

They were rescued within the hour.

:::

And so it came to pass that Andy got his heart’s desire and all it cost him was his heart.

It wasn’t that he missed sex with Lauren, it was that he missed Lauren. Mom and Dad murmured of trauma and PTSD. Andy knew she had left a piece of her behind in that lab where they had lost their virginity, and their dignity, and so much else. (The number one thing he missed about Lauren was _talking_ to Lauren.) He had dreams where she smiled at him and all was well and then he would wake up and there was a cavity in his chest.

The sex tapes were still out there. Someone—Dr. Campbell, Trask Industries, Sentinel Services—someone, somewhere was holding an anvil over their lives. Sooner or later it would drop. It was a waiting game.

When the Hellfire Club came recruiting, Andy knew his number was up. Esme Frost looked straight at Andy with that knowing smirk as she said, “The people we’re here for, they know who they are.” And Andy knew then what he had to do.

Perhaps it was what he would have done anyway. Heaven knew he was tired of keeping a lid on his anger, of fighting with one hand tied behind his back, of apologizing for existing. Being a mutant was the second-best thing that had ever happened to him—being a human had not exactly been a cakewalk. But would his path have been as clear to him, without the implicit threat behind Esme’s words? _Come with us or else we leak the tapes_. Would he have turned his back on his family? No, he was saving his family, saving Mom and Dad and Lauren a world of pain and humiliation. He could not take back what had happened between them, but he could spare her the rap for it. He could join the Hellfire Club and let Mom and Dad hate him for _that_ , and leave Lauren out of it.

He would not have had the courage to publicly switch allegiances if Lorna hadn’t done it first. Lorna was a mentor, and a kindred spirit, and an example Andy tried to emulate. He saw the lines of resolution set in Lorna’s face, saw the betrayal crack Marcos’s heart in half, and steeled himself. It could be done; Lorna was doing it. Andy was up next.

Lauren saw his intention in the instant before he stepped forward. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

(But he was not giving her up. She had never been his to give up.)

Mom and Dad did not understand why he had to do this, but he had expected Lauren to understand. Mom said, “You are not taking our son.” Dad said, “I can’t let you do this.” Lauren begged, “Please don’t leave me. _Please_ , Andy.”

But it was too late. The battle lines had been drawn: The monsters on one side, the redeemable ones on the other. He left with the Hellfire Club and he did not look back.


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing Lauren learned about boys was that they were after one thing and one thing only. _Why buy the cow when the milk is free?_ went the old quip, and while she did not really believe that—did not believe romantic relationships were a form of entrapment—she was acutely aware that no one would be asking her out if she did not look the way she did. Lauren was what they called an early bloomer. She was wearing sports bras to gym class when the rest of the girls barely needed training bras, and they made their resentment plain. It was maddening. Having a nice rack had never gotten her anything except a whole pile of unwanted and uncomfortable attention. They called it being “well endowed” but it was a curse, not a gift. What sort of wretched power meant that you had the power to turn mens’ heads, but no power in your own right?

By the time Lauren got her real powers, she knew two things: Being a mutant meant there was a target painted on your back. Being a busty, attractive girl was much the same.

:::

When Andy left for the Hellfire Club, he took her libido with her. He took a few other pieces of her too. She went from thinking about sex all the time—she couldn’t even be in the same _room_ as him without her skin feeling electric—to finding it actively triggering because sex meant Andy, and Andy-related thoughts hurt too much.

Naturally for the next six months the only topic of conversation between her parents was Andy, Andy, Andy. It was okay though. There were two different Andys, one who was her snarky, insufferable little brother; that was the one her parents wanted to bring home. The other Andy—that was the one she needed to avoid thinking about at all costs. As long as she maintained the separation between the two Andys she could get up every morning and go to work at the clinic and pretend to be a functioning person.

Nothing held her interest: She hardly ate and she didn’t watch TV. The day they moved into the new apartment her mom was wiping the inside of the refrigerator with a warm cloth soaked in baking soda and she made an offhand comment how she’d only ever seen the fridge this empty the time they’d left Andy home alone for the weekend, and all of a sudden Lauren was so turned on she was lightheaded from it. She was a fool. There were not two Andys; there was one Andy and he had ravished her and then left her.

That night she felt the familiar itch in her fingertips, in the stiff peaks of her nipples, in the empty clenching of her womb. Goddamn him for doing this to her. _Goddamn you, Andy_ , she thought as her hands worked furiously, _damn you for leaving me, it’s no good without you, I’m no good without you_. She was so angry she had trouble falling asleep, despite her release.

And then came the dream where she stepped out onto that rooftop and there he was, smiling a big dopey smile like he’d just seen her at breakfast. She said, “Your clothes, your hair—I wasn’t sure I recognized you.” She was lying. She would have recognized him blindfolded at the bottom of the sea. No one else had this effect on her. He was much changed, yes; he was still her Andy.

He searched her face for a long, heart-stopping moment before he reached for her hand. She was afraid—what? That Fenris would rear its head and they would accidentally obliterate the building? Well that horse had left the barn. Fenris was the sum of Lauren and Andy, and when she was around Andy she became a creature made of nothing but desire. Even in that nightmare lab where Sonya had died and everything was awful, it shamed her to remember how the _wanting_ had boiled out of her blood like hot oil.

He brought her hand to his mouth and brushed his lips over the knuckles, and she forgot how to breathe. He said, “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Where is here? What’s happening to us?”

“Does it matter? We’re together.” He shrugged in that insouciant way he had of consigning all consequences to the distant horizon.

She could have pointed out the only reason they weren’t together in real life was because Andy preferred it that way (because he was a boy and he had gotten from her the only thing boys ever wanted, crowed a small treacherous voice). But she would not risk saying anything to jeopardize this fragile moment. He had yet to let go of her hand. He didn’t do any of the things she would have expected Andy to do: draw her closer, pull a coin out of her ear, start a conversation. They just watched the sun set and the stars come out while holding hands in companionable silence. There should not have been so many stars, not in the city. The sun should not have set so quickly. Andy and Lauren should not have had this lull—there was a war on and they were combatants.

Before they parted he kissed her on the forehead. “See you next time.”

And she knew with the certainty of dream-logic that there would be a next time, that this was really Andy and not a ghost conjured by her wish-fulfillment, that she would keep masturbating every night until she saw him again.

:::

Andy had not taken any of his meager possessions when he left. The von Strucker research was still there, the books and grainy photos and newspaper clippings he had amassed. The more Lauren pored over them the more she had to admit Andy had been right, Great-Grandpa Andreas did not appear to have ever interacted with another living woman besides his sister Andrea. If the two of them had not been fucking then Grandpa Otto must have been delivered by a stork, or else sprung fully formed from Andreas’s forehead. Lauren did not think the von Struckers’ radical mutant-supremacy ideology was the _only_ reason young Otto had rejected their legacy.

Lauren almost envied them, Andreas and Andrea. They were twins; they were probably born reading each other’s minds. For Lauren there were two Andys, pre-Fenris and post-Fenris, and while post-Fenris Andy liked her much better than pre-Fenris Andy had, she could not be certain how much of that liking was Fenris-induced, hormone-induced. It was all hopelessly mixed up, the sex and the powers and the emotions. All she knew was she missed him, and she needed him, and it wasn’t fair: She was well practiced at breaking it off with boys. But losing her brother? She had never bargained for that.

How easy it must have been for Andreas and Andrea, who had evidently not given a hoot about what anyone thought. Lauren had her parents to think of, though. She had Clarice and John and Marcos and everyone else in the mutant underground, the clinic, all the people who had come to depend on her. It wasn’t so much that she believed in what they were doing (although she did) as she believed in the people she was doing it with, and Lauren had spent her whole life going along to get along. Andy, on the other hand, had never met a boat he did not itch to rock. What scared her the most was that if she had it to do over again—Andy on one side, the rest of her life on the other—she did not know how she would choose.

She didn’t tell her parents about the dreams. Maybe she ought to have; maybe there was some enemy intelligence to be gleaned there. She kept them to herself because they were hers, hers and Andy’s. Her dad spoke of “meeting people your own age” and “your sole focus can’t be finding him” as if there was a normal life waiting for her on the other side of this. As if normality had not evaporated the day Sentinel Services ran them out of their house.

After Lauren slammed out of the kitchen her mother came after her. She said, “Your dad doesn’t mean it. You know when I was carrying Andy, and there was some risk of complications, he wanted me to give up then too. He came around.”

“You never told me.” Lauren studied her mother. “He wanted you to terminate the pregnancy? How risky was it?”

“Somewhat,” she said, tight-lipped. Her mother was a nurse.

“How many months along?”

“Four.” It must have been risky indeed, if they had been entertaining an abortion at that stage. “Your dad said to think of you, but I _was_ thinking of you. The whole reason we had Andy was because we didn’t want you to grow up alone.” She smoothed a strand of hair away from Lauren’s face. “You’re older now. You can help me bring your brother home safe.”

Lauren shivered. If he was nothing more than her brother, he wouldn’t have left in the first place. If he wasn’t just her brother, Mom was going to lose him anyway.

:::

The next time she saw Andy, it was in a meadow of wildflowers. A cottage stood at the edge of the foreboding woods. “That looks familiar.”

“It’s where we stayed the summer Grandma Ellen had her cancer scare.”

“Do you think it looks the same inside?”

“Let’s find out.”

Her hand had crept into his without meaning to, and they swung their arms as they advanced toward the cottage. The smell of smoke and heather rose to meet them. In the kitchen there was a bowl of blackberries and a pitcher of iced tea on the rustic wooden table. Slices of lemon bobbed to the surface. They crept down the hall to the room they used to share here, the room with the bunkbeds and the walls painted a cheery banana-peel yellow. Andy collapsed onto the top bunk and let his arm dangle over the side so they could clasp hands. Somehow the child-size beds accommodated their grown-up frames. A tendril of desire uncurled in Lauren’s belly and she suppressed it ruthlessly. They could do this, they could touch without it ending up as either Fenris or sex.

They wondered if the forest was actually inhabited by monsters. They speculated whether the contents of the books on the shelf matched their spines, or if the pages were all blank. “I could get up to check.”

“No,” he said firmly. “Stay where you are.”

“Andy? This is weird. Sleeping with the enemy.”

She thought he would protest he wasn’t her enemy, that he would never hurt her, but he only snorted. “You’re not sleeping with me. Anymore.”

“Do you wish I was?” _Is that all I am to you?_

“Yup. I also wish you were talking to me.”

“If you want to be with me all you have to do is come home.”

“How long would it be until Mom and Dad found out about us? Everyone would find out about us. Reeva would make sure of it.”

“Who’s Reeva?” He didn’t answer. “Who’s Reeva, and what does she have on us?”

She got no more out of him, but she had a name now. _Reeva_. Lauren said, “You know I’m not mad you joined the dark side, I’m mad you left me. ”

“Mom and Dad—“

“You left _me_.”

His voice was tender with regret, “You deserve better than me.”

She sat up so fast she banged her head on the bedpost, and Andy yelped in alarm but she speared him into silence with the force of her scorn. “You want to go around preemptively disappointing people before they can decide to be disappointed, you go right ahead. It might work on Mom and Dad but it isn’t going to work on me. I know you, Andy. And you’re an idiot.” She looked at their entwined hands, which had begun to glow, and she said, “Oh shit. Whoops.”

:::

They were decanting the Chinese takeout into microwavable bowls when Dad said, “Andy called the clinic today.”

Lauren’s chopsticks clattered to the table.

“What did he say?” gasped Mom.

“Nothing. He hung up.”

“Are you sure it was him?”

“I know it was him. I can’t explain it, I just know it. I guess it wasn’t my voice he wanted to hear.” Dad’s eyes slid sideways to Lauren. “He asked for you, the receptionist said.”

Mom was over the moon. This was the first sign they’d had that Andy wanted to come back. Mom would have been willing to drag him home by the ear. Dad probably thought he could _talk_ Andy around, that magical words existed which he could say to change his son's mind, and he had only to discover what they were.

Lauren knew her parents loved Andy, and she supposed Andy knew it too, but there was a difference between loving someone and understanding them or knowing how to talk to them. Lauren had always been the conduit between her parents’ expectations and Andy’s mutinous impulses, smoothing the configuration of their relationships into a constellation more like a family and less like a powder keg. Lauren was the mortar that knit them all together. The problem was, no one had ever thought to ask Lauren what shape _she_ wanted to be.

:::

She wondered if he would ever get Andy back. Get him back as what, exactly? Friends with benefits? (“Siblings with benefits,” Andy would have guffawed.)

:::

The supermarket looked the same as it always did, except the aisles were eerily empty of foot traffic. Andy had wanted her to push him along in the grocery cart, and when that elicited a hard no from Lauren he waited until her back was turned and loaded the cart up with seventeen different varieties of mushrooms.

“Oh my god they even _smell_ like real mushrooms,” she said, backing away with a shudder.

Andy popped one in his mouth. “They sure do. Damn, every time we get pizza it’s ‘oh no Lauren’s allergic.’ Why are you trying to keep me from eating vegetables?”

“Technically they’re a fungus. Anyway don’t you have people to cook for you now?”

“I don’t like their cooking.”

They got a different shopping cart and made a leisurely circuit of the store. Andy swept an entire shelf’s worth of Lucky Charms into the cart and Lauren put half of them back. He laughed, flicked his fingers and the cereal aisle exploded in a rain of marshmallows and raisins and chocolate pebbles, Andy tilting his open mouth up to catch as much of the cornucopia as he could. Lauren looked on, half exasperated, half indulgent.

He said, “If we can’t go to town with our powers in a dream, when _can_ we?”

The idea of just letting go of her powers was both compelling and disquieting. “You sure it’s just a dream?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you sure that nothing that happens to us in a dream happens in real life? What about last time?” There had been a hole in both their ceilings from Fenris. _That_ had taken some creative dissembling to the people they lived with.

He scoffed, but he seemed less certain than he had been. In the beverage aisle he grabbed three twelve-packs of soda and Lauren didn’t stop him, though she knew Mom would have. He said, “Lorna had the baby.”

“We saw.”

“You saw?”

“Everyone in the Western Hemisphere saw. Is she okay? Is the baby okay?”

“They’re both fine. Her name is Dawn.”

“Dawn. Marcos was worried sick.”

He looked up sharply. “You haven’t said anything to anyone about the dreams?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Me neither.” He drew a shaky breath. “Lorna says if Reeva ever gets the impression I’m not one hundred percent committed to the cause I’m in big trouble. Reeva can’t know about the dreams.”

“Why on earth did you take the stupid risk of calling me at the clinic then? This Reeva doesn’t sound like somebody you want to mess with.” Lord, what kind of trouble was her little brother getting into without her there to stop him?

He shrugged helplessly. “I just wanted to hear your voice so bad.”

He was wearing that kicked puppy look she could never resist and her feet moved without her telling them to. He had grown enough he could rest his chin comfortably on the crown of her head. After they drew apart he took her left hand, turned it over, and kissed the inside of her wrist. A few drops of blood welled up, bright red against her pale skin. She hadn’t even felt him sink his teeth into her veins because she’d been too busy trying not to let her heart hammer out of chest. Andy was admitting he missed her, and not just teasing her or fucking her--he missed _grocery shopping_ with her.

“Andy.” She looked down at her wrist and up at him, in an agony of indecision whether to scold him or kiss him.

“Now when you wake up you’ll know if it’s real or not,” he smirked.

He could as easily have gone for permanent marker or henna tattoos. The weekend they had marathoned the Harry Potter movies Lauren had fallen asleep first, and he had taken the opportunity to draw all over her face with her waterproof eyeliner and document it with pictures.

She was irrationally glad he had chosen to leave a mark on her body.

In the morning the teeth marks were still there, and she was so relieved to see the little half-moons she pressed her mouth to her own wrist and fancied she could feel the phantom touch of Andy’s lips.

:::

When her father’s radioactive hands melted the steering wheel and sent their car careening into a gulch, Lauren’s first thought was _I can’t believe we’re not dead_. Her second thought was _Guess I’m not the only one in this family who keeps secrets_.

Was it strange that Lauren envied Dad for his capacity to involuntarily lose control? Lauren was always in control. Her powers depended on it. It seemed like she was always resisting something or repressing something, and what she wanted was to just let go for five minutes. She’d built a series of dams to keep herself from flooding the riverbank, and now she didn’t know what shape the river was originally. She thought about Fenris, and how she had never felt so free, and how she had no idea there was so much bloodlust bottled up in her. Not the sort of bloodlust that made her an axe murderer—it was just that most of the time she felt so _impotent_. Being with Andy made her feel powerful. Being with Andy and activating Fenris made her feel like she could have colonized another galaxy.

:::

“Dad’s powers are manifesting again.”

“I thought Grandpa Otto had suppressed them permanently.”

“He’s had a stressful couple of months.”

“Shit. I remember when I first got my powers.”

“It was the bullies brought it on?”

“It was mostly you. You used to walk around the house without a bra on.”

“Well thank god Dad isn’t a teenager.”

“Was it like that for you? Did the powers make you extra horny?”

“Not exactly.”

“You never told me how it happened.”

“You remember two years ago when I came home early from a sleepover?”

“Yeah, Dad had to go and get you because there was a mutant attack.”

Lauren bared her teeth. “I _was_ the mutant attack.”

“Wicked! Wait, why’d you say you were attacked?”

“I was. There was a boy.”

“Son of a …”

“It was fine. I was fine. Calm down—when you get the urge to hit something I can feel it.”

He gave a bitter chuckle. “No, I have no right. I’m just your brother.”

“You’re not listening, Andy. The reason it was traumatic was not because a boy was pressuring me for sex—that happens all the time—it was because I could finally do something about it. And I wasn’t sure I should. I almost didn’t.”

“That happens all the time,” he repeated incredulously.

“If you’re a girl, yeah. A certain kind of girl. If you’re the other kind of girl they just harass you for _not_ having boobs.”

“Two years ago. That’s when you changed—I should have known. Did you even want to go out with any of those jerkwads? Jack, Wes, any of them?”

“Not … particularly? It was easier to say yes to one of them than have the whole pack of them circling.”

“Okay. But you and me. That wasn’t—that was different.”

“You and me is Fenris. Do you even have to ask?”

“I know that, but I’m asking now. Did you ever truly want me?”

“Andy, I didn’t even know what want was before you. It’s like you started a fire where before there had only been a fireplace. Fenris scares me, but not as bad as the idea of not having Fenris, the idea of not having you.”

He gulped. “Thanks for telling me.”

:::

The most surreal aspect of walking around a university campus was how much she did not feel she belonged there—and how the unbelonging did not spark a single pang of loss or regret. Lauren had crammed for her APs and her SATs, had agonized over which teachers to ask for letters of recommendation, had made spreadsheets comparing financial aid guidelines and merit-based scholarships. All of it belonged to another life. She was a different person now, and she wasn’t sorry for it.

She _was_ sorry about Noah. Noah was smart and kind clearly _interested_ but he wasn’t skeevy about it. She wasn’t sorry about using Noah’s interest in her to obtain access to Madeleine’s research; she had a moral imperative to destroy that research. What bothered her was performing feelings she didn’t have. It had never bothered her before, faking interest in a boy—it was as automatic as putting on mascara. Because Lauren had never known the real thing before. The whole time she was batting her eyelashes at Noah all she could think about was what would Andy say—would he make caustic comments from the sidelines or would he straight-up start a brawl?

She was sorriest when Noah died. Not sorry enough to wish she had acted differently, just sorry that he had to die.

:::

Andy was waiting for her on a bridge. She paused for a second just to admire his slouching profile leaning over the parapet. It was indecent, she thought--nobody ought to look that good whose posture was that bad.

The stone bridge had three segmented arches, and Lauren’s heart always beat faster for Andy but it was pounding like a drum now. It couldn’t be. It was. The skyline of Florence was highly distinctive: there was the unmistakeable dome of the _Duomo_ cathedral, the crenellated tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, the basilica, the synagogue, it was all there. She whipped her head around to gawk at Andy, who had not looked so pleased since he’d won a bet by scarfing down a whole cheesecake. “You should see my YouTube recommendations. The algorithm thinks the only thing I want to watch is travel vlogs and Renaissance architecture deep-dives.”

“Wow. I never thought I’d really get to see it.”

“Well, now you can.” He offered his arm, and she looped hers through it.

The shops along the river boasted tourist staples like shoes and purses and jewelry. Lauren plucked a wide-brimmed straw hat off a mannequin and answered Andy’s bemused expression with, “What? I don’t want to get sunburn.”

It was everything she had ever wanted. The city was a triumph, and she could not have asked for a better guide than Andy. He had watched untold hours of footage just to ensure she could catch a glimpse of a fountain or the detail of a carved relief or rub the smooth worn contour of a cobblestone. Even the gelato flavors were a revelation—why couldn’t they have pistachio and hazelnut in the U.S.A. too?

“These people have the right idea,” she said, licking her spoon clean. “A gelatería every block.”

“Pace yourself or you won’t have room for lunch,” he warned her.

Lunch was a seedy-looking food cart in the midst of what in real life was surely a bustling central plaza. Lauren glanced longingly at the trendy cafés with their outdoor seating and their umbrellas but Andy tugged her firmly toward the street food. “What _is_ it?” she said, staring dubiously down at her sandwich. Andy had a sandwich in each hand—he had asked for two different sauces—and was alternating a bite out of each. “Beef,” he told her, and only when she’d eaten half of it did he tell her what kind of beef (“ _Stomach_ of the cow?! Seriously?”).

She ate the rest because it was delicious, but she made Andy promise to take her somewhere nice for dinner.

They visited the sculpture gardens, but there was precious little shade and the sun beat down something fierce. They retreated indoors to the nearest cathedral—this town had nearly as many churches as gelaterías—and Lauren was beyond tickled when Andy obtained a cheap, gauzy scarf to drape over her shoulders before they stepped into the atrium. “They don’t let you in if your shoulders are bare.”

She looked down at the spaghetti straps of her romper. “Since when do you care about the sanctity of church? You’ve been playing Candy Crush on your phone every sermon since you were twelve.”

“I don’t want God getting jealous of your boobs,” he said solemnly.

The museums were a veritable labyrinth. There was a wing for every major artist, every one of their patrons, every century. Half the exhibits had been replaced by X-Men posters, because Andy had evidently prioritized researching gelato flavors over art, and Lauren couldn’t even say he had made the wrong call. Art was dramatic but distant. Food she could share with Andy here and now. She still wanted to see the Michelangelo, though. She hadn’t come all the way to Florence to leave without seeing it.

They climbed a hill and there it was, Michelangelo’s David, towering over everything. She squinted. “Is it supposed to be made out of bronze?”

“It’s a replica. We can see the real one later, I wanted to watch the sunset up here.”

It was the glorious panoramic view you saw on all the postcards, Florence spread out before you, fingers of fading light stabbing through the clouds into the rolling foothills. It was exactly as beautiful as she had been promised, and all she wanted to do was take a selfie with Andy to remember it by.

“What is it, Lauren?”

“I’ve got like, five pictures of us. From before.” There was a vicious stinging in her eyes. “Great-Grandpa Andreas probably had more of Andrea. After she died he kept her music box and he put locks of their hair in it. He loved her so much.”

“A music box,” he marveled. “Where on earth did you get that?”

“It’s a long story. I need you to come home, Andy.”

“I can’t. There’s stuff I have to do.” The name hung unspoken between them. _Reeva_.

When had the planes of Andy's face grown so sharp? Why did he look at her like that, with hunger in his eyes, and grief? Christ almighty, what did he know of grief? He was the one who had _left_.

Dinner was a moonlit terrace and a procession of charcuterie boards piled high with exotic cheeses and cured meats, followed by pasta, followed by _more_ meat. “Do they only have two food groups, meat and dairy?”

“And bread,” he said, dipping a slice in the meat sauce to sponge it off his plate. There were mushrooms in his rigatoni but not in hers.

Lauren had always thought “nine-course meal” meant the table must be groaning under the weight of all the dishes, but it turned out they whisked each plate away as soon as you were finished and gave you a clean fork, and the waiter even darted in to scoop the breadcrumbs off the tablecloth. Lauren joked that Andy was going to have to pry her out of her dress if this meal went on for much longer, and when she saw the way his eyes darkened there was a peculiar swooping sensation in her stomach. Because the possibility of doing it _here_ had never arisen. The dreams had always taken as a backdrop the familiar haunts of their shared childhood. But today had been different. Today had been special. He had even wheedled her into trying on the dress she was presently wearing, a floral-print affair with a deep V neckline that flared at the waist into tiered skirts. She had agreed to the dress on the condition he re-attire himself to look less like he’d crawled out of a Goth kid’s closet. Yes, her little brother cleaned up _very_ nicely.

Lauren was used to the constant low-level hum of craving skin-to-skin-contact with Andy; that was the background music of her existence. What she had forgotten was the feeling of being body-slammed by a wave of raw want and not even being able to tell if it was her own. If she kept sitting here she was going to be _irradiated_ by desire.

“Come here,” said Andy, low and intimate, and that was the end of the nine-course meal.

She lowered herself into his lap and his hands were on her, his hands were everywhere. She pressed a line of kisses along his jaw. “Did you just take me out on a date?” She giggled. “Does it occur to you we’re doing this backwards?”

“There’s no backwards or forwards, there’s only us.“ When Andy smiled at her it transformed the familiar lines of his stupid stubborn face into an affliction of beauty such as she had never seen.

:::

She thought if he was ready to make love to her he was ready to come home. She was mistaken. It was a different Andy who met her at the hospital. His powers were a match for hers—he had always been a match for her. _This is wrong_ , she thought. Their powers were meant to be complementary. She recalled the way her gut had twisted when told her, _There’s stuff I have to do._

He said, “Get out of the way,” and she chose to take it as a warning rather than a threat.

:::

She did not know how her father did it. She could not imagine choosing to take a serum that would suppress her powers and _sever her from Andy_. It was unthinkable.

:::

Weeks went by without any shared dreams until he came to her in a sandcastle by the sea. She had forgotten which family vacation this was, which beach, which year, but when Andy got there to reinforce her memories the edges of objects grew imperceptibly less hazy.

“I kissed a girl,” he said, no preamble, no _I’m sorry_ or _I missed you_. “And I killed her. Not on purpose—it was an accident.”

“The accident was when you kissed her or when you killed her?”

“Which one are you more upset about?”

Lauren mimed a chopping motion and a discus of power flew from her hand to slice the turret of her sandcastle in half. She had killed people too. She and Andy had killed people together (fifteen of them). What seemed to prey on Andy was not that he had committed manslaughter but that he had committed betrayal: Everyone in Rebecca’s life had betrayed her, betrayal stacked upon betrayal until Andy had driven the nail into the coffin, and he felt responsible for those earlier violations of trust because he wouldn’t be Andy if he wasn’t trying to be the fall guy. It was pointless trying to talk him out of it. She suggested they go swimming instead.

She did not feel threatened by this Rebecca. For one thing, Andy had not fucked her (Lauren would have known, and she would have throttled the bitch herself). For another, Lauren no longer believed that it was sex that kept Andy tethered to her (although even when she _had_ believed it she had not been willing to stop). What they had was so much more than that.

They waded hand in hand into the waves. The real ocean was unfailingly, bracingly cold but this water sloshed lukewarm and gentle around their ankles. “Do you remember that music box I told you about?”

Andy’s ears always perked up at any mention of Andrea von Strucker’s music box.

She went on, “Dad told me a story about it, a story Grandpa Otto told him when he was a little kid. It’s called the Erlking—it’s one of those kidnapped-by-elves stories. I looked into it, and next thing you know I’m reading a big fat tome on fairy tales and folklore. Have you heard of the Ballad of Tam Lin?”

He shook his head.

“Tam Lin was a mortal man in thrall to the Queen of Faerie. She raised him like a pig for slaughter, because every seventh year she owed a tithe to Hell. On Halloween night, when the Faerie Court saddled up for the Wild Hunt, Tam Lin went to meet his doom—and was rescued by his true love Janet, who pulled him off his horse and held onto him as the Faerie Queen turned him into a snake, and a bear, and a bird, and a lump of burning coal. But Janet knew him in every guise and she didn’t let go.”

Andy had been listening raptly. “How did she know he was her true love? If he was the Faerie Queen’s prisoner—”

“He’d already knocked this chick up,” she said shortly, and he went, “Oh.” Then, “Lauren—“

“Relax, the answer is no.”

“Sweet Jesus. Don’t say shit like that.”

He was missing the point as usual. “Whatever it is Reeva’s got on you, I don’t care. _I know you_. I know you better than you do. Don’t forget who taught you to swim.” And she dived headfirst into the waves without waiting to see if he would follow.

:::

The new apartment did not have an in-unit washer or dryer, which given how little they were paying in rent was no surprise. Lauren and her mother were on their way back from the laundromat across the street when Mom said, “You know you don’t have to go on the safehouse runs if you don’t want to. You can keep helping me at the clinic—you have an exemplary bedside manner.”

“Clarice asked me to,” she replied. “I’m needed.”

Mom was frowning. “You’re needed here too.”

“Anybody can change a dressing or start an IV drip, Mom. Not everybody can do what I can do.”

“I just worry about you,” sighed Mom. “With Andy gone—I don’t even know how he’s getting his laundry done—all this extra worry has nowhere to go. Are you sure about this, honey?”

She stopped and turned to her mother. “This is what I need to do. It’s my decision.”

“If you’re certain.”

“Mom, sooner or later you’re going to have to decide if you joined the Mutant Underground because you think mutants are people, or just to keep an eye on your own kids.”

Mom blinked. Lauren was pretty sure her mother had not thought mutants were people when they had first fled their old life. But people changed; children grew up.

“For the record,” Lauren added, “Andy does know how to do laundry. He doesn’t separate the darks and lights but he does fine.”

:::

The next time it was a ballet studio. In fact it was her old ballet studio. She supposed Andy had been there enough times, tagging along with Mom when he was little, to recreate it from memory. It had to be Andy because Lauren would not have voluntarily gone near a barre.

He sensed her discomfort immediately. “What’s wrong, Lauren? I thought you’d like this. Dance always made you so happy.”

She looked down at her leotard and she wanted to throw up.

“Aw, shit. You had to give it up when we went on the run. I’m sorry.”

She shook her head emphatically. “I had to give it up before that. _Look_ at me. I mean, I can’t even move without something jiggling.”

“I’m looking,” said Andy, steadily. “You’re perfect.”

She felt a tiny pinprick of pain, like someone had pressed the thin blade of a knife to the back of her neck. “That’s your dick talking.”

“I thought you were perfect before I knew what my dick was for.” He had never looked so deathly serious.

“Really?”

“Always,” he said, and it was a promise.

It took every ounce of Lauren’s hard-won dance-instilled discipline to form the next question. “Then why did you ditch me as soon as you’d had me the first time? Why did you leave me, Andy?”

Here was the secret: She didn’t need to hold hands with him to know when he was telling the truth. She had been able to see right through him since the day he was born. But it still _felt_ good when he cradled her face like this; she felt warm and safe and cherished. He kissed her, slow and thoroughly. “Because I love you. I’ll never love anyone the way I love you. And Reeva has the video of us.”

How was it possible to feel simultaneously safe _and_ about to be hauled to the top of the track in a roller coaster car? Andy, that’s how. “You clown.” She thumped her fist into his chest. “You absolute moron. Why didn’t you tell me?” She wasn’t sure if she was talking about Reeva or the other thing. She had needed to hear him say it. She had spent too long in a woman’s body not to doubt the motives of every attention she ever received but this was _Andy_ and if he said he wanted all of her she trusted him--he wanted not just the bright or attractive pieces, but all of her.

She blasted him with a firehose of queries about Reeva and her diabolical schemes and what sort of exposure she was threatening them with, but he shushed her.

“Would you have joined the Hellfire Club with me if I’d asked you to?” There was curiosity but no accusation in his tone. He waited for her answer, holding her close, fingertips resting at the base of her skull.

Lauren thought about it. Not at the time, maybe. It had all gone down so fast. But she had had months to stew in his absence. She had tried being separated from him and she’d rather brave nuclear winter without a parka, thanks. “I love you too. I love you so much I don’t think there’s room for much else. If it’s between living with you or without you, that’s not a choice.”

Andy threw his head back and laughed, because he had apparently figured it out a long time ago: He’d never tried to untangle Fenris and sex and feelings because all the knots ended in Laurenandandy, and that was good enough for him. They’d spent their whole lives together and this was the first developmental milestone he had hit before her. This was the only important thing, now.

“What, like it’s hard? You’re mine, Lauren.”

There were boys who said _my girl_ the way they said _my motorcycle_ or _my electric toothbrush_. Andy said her name the way you might repeat a string of winning lottery numbers.

They were still cooked, of course. They were facing Reeva on one side and their parents on the other, and all they had on their side was the power to destroy the universe.

She told him to get away from Reeva and bring Lorna and Dawn if he could. “Leave Mom and Dad to me. Let me be the problem child for once.”

:::

The hardest thing Lauren ever did was walk into her parents’ room and explain that Andy wanted to come home.

She started by telling them about the dreams. At first Mom could not assimilate the concept of Lauren holding out on her. She might have expected subterfuge from Andy, but Lauren? Lauren had never in her life given her parents a minute’s unrest.

“I don’t understand. How long have the two of you been having these dreams?”

“Ages,” said Lauren. “I think they started before he left, even. After we used Fenris for the first time.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“No, not here, I mean the first time after Sentinel Services captured us and shipped us off to that lab.”

“The lab where Sonya died.”

“Sonya died because we wouldn’t do as we were told. They wanted to … observe the Fenris phenomenon up close. It’s triggered by touch, but a sexual connection amplifies it to high heaven.”

Dad’s face was ashen. Mom was mouthing the word _sexual_ without actually saying it aloud.

“They killed Sonya, and they would have killed Clarice if we hadn’t done what they wanted. So we had sex.”

“You … and Andy,” said Dad, as if there might have been somebody else present.

Lauren closed her eyes briefly. “Me and Andy. And there were cameras.”

The look of understanding that flickered over her mother’s face was more painful than any rejection might have been.

“No, no, Mom, you have it wrong. It wasn’t them that hurt us. Yes they hurt us, but that’s not what’s making this so hard. I’m afraid of hurting you. Me and Andy don’t want to hurt you.” She saw they were going to need her to spell it out and maybe draw them a map. “Andy and I belong together.”

“Well of course, we’re a family,” said Mom.

“No, we _belong_ together. He’s everything to me. That’s why I dream about him. That’s why Fenris keeps happening. I can’t stay away from it because I can’t stay away from him.”

Dad looked at her like she was a stranger, this daughter he did not recognize, but Mom’s eyebrows rose as she asked, “Clarice knew? All this time and she didn’t say anything to me?”

“This isn’t _about_ you, Mom.”

“The hell it isn’t. People are apprehensive enough about you and Andy and Fenris without throwing sordid rumors into the mix.”

“They’re not rumors if they’re true. Reeva Payge blackmailed Andy into joining the Hellfire Club because she has a sex tape, and if he leaves she _will_ release it. That’s the price of getting him back.”

Mom put her head in her hands and said, “Where did your dad and I go wrong?”

“You have been trying to fix Andy his entire life, and all you’ve done is frustrate him and smother him. I won’t be a party to it anymore. There’s nothing to fix.”

Mom said, “They did this to you. Those doctors corrupted my children. You’re older, Lauren. You have to help Andy—“ and really she preferred the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments to when they played the elder-sibling-leads-by-example card. Time to turn the guilt canon back on them.

“Okay. Who was Grandpa Otto’s mother? Who was your paternal grandmother, Dad?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. Mom looked lost. “What’s she talking about, Reed?”

Lauren answered since it seemed like Dad wasn’t going to. “Otto’s mother was Andrea von Strucker. They were Fenris, Andreas and Andrea, and we are too. We can’t help it—it’s the way we were made. Even our powers are two sides of the same coin.”

“If this is another mutant thing I don’t understand because I’m not a mutant,” Mom began indignantly.

“But when you found out we were mutants, you chose _us_. You gave up everything to be with us. I’m just asking you to choose us again.” It was as close as she could come to pleading. She had to stay strong.

Dad finally spoke. “I can’t do this. You’re my little girl, Lauren. I can’t watch you throw your life away.”

“Throw my _life_ away?” she blazed back. “We’re talking about Andy. He’s your son too.”

Dad recoiled at the words “your son” as if he’d been slapped. “Is this the reason he left? To keep away from you? Was that it, Lauren?”

Mom said, “But Lorna—“

“Lorna left because she was sick of being on the losing side. Andy left because nobody here supported or appreciated him, including me. I let him down. It won’t happen again.” Her whole life she had been in Andy’s corner by circumstance; it felt good to be there permanently by choice.

Mom groped for Dad’s hand and they sat in stunned silence. At length Dad said, “He’s your _brother_ , Lauren. This is wrong.”

“Wrong like all those violent mutant felons you locked up were wrong? You know better than that, Dad.”

“I understand what happened, happened,” said Mom, keeping her voice very even. “It happened under duress. You kids have been through so much. But you can’t expect to _carry on_ —“

“Look, Grandpa Otto disowned his parents. Are you guys going to disown us? You can have two kids or you can have none, it’s up to you.” It was harsh but effective: Mom and Dad both blanched. More gently, she said, “I’ll leave you now. But he’s coming home the day after tomorrow unless you tell him not to.”

The next morning her mother’s eyes were rimmed in red. She expected neither of her parents had slept much. As Lauren and her mom waited in front of the gurgling coffeemaker Mom said, “Your dad and I talked about it. After Andy comes home, we’ll have to move. The two of you will need separate bedrooms.”

“After Andy comes home,” repeated Lauren.

“Of course,” said Mom. “Getting Andy home safe is our first priority.”

“And after he’s home?” she pressed.

Mom put a hand to her temple. “Andy is _sixteen_. When I was sixteen I’m not sure I even knew which way was up. You think you know what you want, but I’ve been there before and you really, really don’t.”

Lauren could have told her it wasn’t a matter of thinking or wanting, it was a matter of breathing. Existing. But she judged it was not what her mother needed to hear in this moment. “Mom, what’s more important, the way you love someone or the fact that you love them?”

“Please, Lauren. You have to give us time.”

“All right.” She paused. There was a question she dreaded the answer to, but not knowing would be worse than not asking. “Did you ever regret it? Deciding to keep Andy when Dad and the doctors were all telling you not to?”

Mom’s face was haggard, her hair a fright and her bathrobe speckled with coffee stains. All the exhaustion drained from her voice when she spoke, however, and there was only cold certainty. “Never. Not once have I wished I didn’t have either of you.” And she shuffled out of the kitchen, cradling her mug.

:::

The forest outside their little cottage was not full of monsters after all, but birdsong and a red-gold canopy that turned to flame in the sun. Twigs and dry leaves and the occasional chestnut crunched underfoot. It was a scene out of the musical number of some Disney movie. Being with Andy was not unlike a Disney movie in some respects: you could see the ending coming a mile off. Everything felt clear and obvious and right.

When she picked a handful of ripe blackberries and fed them to Andy, they exploded with a burst of joy in his mouth. She could feel that too; she could feel everything.

He traced the fading scar of his teeth marks on her wrist. “I didn’t just want your body. I wanted your soul. You know that right?”

She bumped their noses together. “Dummy. You are my soul.”

When Andy was sixteen and Lauren was eighteen, he came home to her for good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With many thanks to csgt, doks, OriginalBlBred, intothecest and everyone else who dragged me kicking and screaming aboard this ship--and apologies to Azdaema whom I dragged along after me, sorry not sorry!
> 
> As soon as the dreams started in S2 I remembered Lauren had Florence on her bucket list and I wrote this story to get us there (also for the condom jokes). 
> 
> [Lampredotto](https://bucketlistjourney.net/eat-lampredotto-sandwich-florence-italy/) is a Florentine specialty made from the fourth and final stomach of the cow and if you are ever in Florence I highly recommend the [Tripperia Pollini](https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187895-d3726456-Reviews-Tripperia_Pollini-Florence_Tuscany.html) food cart in the Piazza di Sant'Ambrogio. For gelato I would go with [GROM](https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187895-d783320-Reviews-GROM_Il_Gelato_come_una_volta-Florence_Tuscany.html), which is a chain that originated in Turin but their ingredients are so high-quality the stuff basically tastes like ambrosia. And the view from the [Piazzale Michaelangelo](https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187895-d242858-Reviews-Piazzale_Michelangelo-Florence_Tuscany.html) is indeed everything it's cracked up to be.


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